In USA ESRB Adult games are often sex-related, and exclude most games, while popular games like Skyrim or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 are rated PEGI 18 in Europe due to violence. Microsoft will now allow those games that are rated PEGI 18 in as long as they are not rated Adult in USA.

"It basically ends up disqualifying games that would be ESRB Mature," said Windows Corporate VP of Web Services Antoine Leblond.

"This is to give developers a heads up that that’s where we’re going," Leblond said, "So they can have the peace of mind around developing the kinds of games that will have those ratings."

The change will however only come into play in December – until then those 18-rated games will remained banned from the App Store.

Of course most of these games can also be side-loaded onto Windows 8 PCs, a point Leblond wanted to emphasize.

"We want the world of desktop apps to to keep existing [outside of the Windows Store]," he said. "There’s no reason to get in the way of that. Valve can keep being Valve." And you can keep buying Skyrim from it.”

it was obvious they would allow it, why would xbox allow it and not windows 8?
this would make easier hardcore games like call of duty to be made for windows 8 via WinRT dev. that would be really cool actually.

Lasp24

I am really happy that they did this, because it is mainly going to be teens and adults who buy and use this, so they should have games that they would enjoy as well

Not really. SKyrim, CoD, etc aren’t rated ESRB Mature in the US are they?

techieg

All MS needs to do is extend the existing parental controls in Win7/Win8 to apps in the Windows Store, if they have not already done so. The thing is I am unaware of parents who are responsible enough to actually use such features.